Africa’s Maker Movement: Get Involved

Africa’s Maker Movement has arrived, in a big way, and it is time to get involved. With the Maker Faire Africa 2014 just around the corner, we tell you everything you need to know, and have a look at theMakerSpace.

Maker Faire Africa (MFA) 2014 will bring together inventors, hackers, makers, entrepreneurs and creative tinkerers from across South Africa, during a 4-Day Festival of Making that spills into the streets of Joburg’s emerging ‘Maker Precincts’; Maboneng & Tshimologong. Their goal?

Celebrate the relentless ingenuity of South Africa as part of Africa’s Maker Movement.

Attendees to Maker Faire Africa will be inspired by a new view of their own city; a peek into the minds of the inventors who are re-MAKE-ing its future–through new ideas, that lead to new products, that lead to new exports, that lead to new industries, and ultimately re-shape its culture to form a MAKER CITY.

Have you heard about the theMakerSpace? It is “a community of like-minded people sharing ideas, making stuff and changing the world.”

“theMakerSpace is about lowering the barriers of entry for people to express their creativity in a physical way. It is about people getting together, working creatively, inspiring each other, engaging with new technology, and building a “bottom-up economy”.

We asked them a little more:

“The fact is that the Maker Movement is happening. Technology has evolved to the point where someone can, in their local maker space, create many items of better quality and more meaningfully than mass production has previously been able to deliver. And everyday more people are joining the movement as they realize the creative potential within themselves. International commentators are going as far as to call it “the new industrial revolution”.

MAKERs make things, using both cutting edge technology and age old methods, or often a combination of both. Makers find value in making something by hand, giving a physical product more value because of the thoughtful, careful and useful way it is designed and made. Makers are not aiming for mass market for their product, they are simply expressing something they love, and in the process creating something worthwhile for the niche that they represent. Makers Openly share resources, expertise, equipment and encouragement because they choose to believe that we can do more together than we can apart.

theMakerSpace is working hard to develop a community of “MAKERs” by attracting engineers, designers, architects, creatives and tinkerer’s to a creative playground equipped with cutting edge low volume manufacturing technology that help lower the barriers to entry for people to express their creativity in a physical way.”

There is massive opportunity to change our economy, and benefit our countrymen.